Under present practices beef cattle which are to be slaughtered for human consumption are usually kept in a feedlot for some time prior to slaughter in order to improve the quality of the meat to be finally sold to the public. In the feedlot the cattle are fed a carefully controlled diet including corn, dried alfalfa, and alfalfa and molasses mixture, vitamins, and often antibiotics. As large numbers of cattle are to be fed, it is common to introduce the feed into a feed wagon which then moves about the feedlot distributing the feed into feed bins available to the cattle. Feed wagons usable for this purpose are shown in my early U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,345,042 and 3,688,827. As disclosed in those patents, the feed is normally dumped into the containers in sequence, viz, alfalfa, followed by corn, followed by alfalfa and molasses mixture, etc., and thus it is initially in layers in the feed container. It is of course necessary that the ingredients of the feed be carefully and thoroughly mixed before being dispensed for consumption by the cattle, and thus means are normally provided in such feed wagons or containers to effect such mixing.
In many cases, the mixers utilized to thoroughly mix the feed in a feed wagon container require substantial power for operation and thus they must be connected to a power takeoff of a tractor of substantial horsepower in order properly to operate. With the mixing devices of the present invention, it has been found that the horsepower requirements can be substantially reduced while still producing a thorough and in some cases improved mixture of the feed ingredients.